Friday, April 14, 2017

In the night in which he was betrayed...

Maundy Thursday, 2017.In the
night in which he was betrayed…

Those are
the words we use when we consecrate the bread and wine for the sacrament of
Holy Communion. Have you ever thought about why the Words of Institution begin
like this? In the
night in which he was betrayed… The betrayal
Jesus experienced in the context of his last supper cuts right to the heart of
what this meal means for us whenever we receive it. If Jesus had instituted
this sacrament at any other time, it wouldn’t mean what it does for us. It had
to happen in the night in which he was betrayed.Have you
ever been betrayed by one of your closest friends? After opening yourself up
and becoming vulnerable to another person, to have them abuse the trust you
placed in them and stab you in the back can cause more pain than if that person
had beaten you to a pulp. If a person
claims to love you and turns around and hurts you deeply, you probably want to
do what most of us want to do in that situation – you want to hurt them back.
You wouldn’t choose to spend your last night alive with that person. Especially
if you knew it was his betrayal that was going to lead to your death, a death
you didn’t deserve. You wouldn’t
include him on your guest list as you gather your loved ones for one last meal
together. You wouldn’t treat him with all the love and compassion that you show
to all the other guests at your table. You wouldn’t get down on your hands and
knees and wash his feet. You wouldn’t break bread with him and offer him the
same blessing you give to all the others who have left everything to be with
you. Certainly, you wouldn’t give yourself, your very body and blood, to this
one who betrayed you. But that’s what Jesus does, isn’t it?He offered
the wine, his blood, to all of them, including the one who had already betrayed
him to the chief priests. Judas had gone to them and asked, “What will you give
me if I betray him to you?” And they paid him off with thirty pieces of silver.
From then on, he was looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus. No doubt,
that’s what Judas was thinking about as he sat down to eat that night with
Jesus and his friends. He felt the weight of the silver coins in one hand while
he received the broken body and the spilled blood of Jesus in the other. Judas
was wondering if this might be a good time to betray the one who was handing
him his very life.It’s hard to
believe that Judas could have turned on Jesus like this and gone through the
charade of participating in Jesus’ last meal with his disciples. What’s even
more unbelievable is that Jesus himself knew exactly what was going on, and he
still gave himself to the one who already had been paid to have him arrested
and killed. As the story
unfolds, we watch Jesus making a point of letting Judas know that he knows. “Very
truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me,” Jesus tells his disciples. When
they want to know who it is, he says, “It’s the one to whom I give this piece
of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” So he dips the bread in the dish
and gives it to Judas. Now, only
one of the disciples understood what was really going on at that moment. Jesus
said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do.” So Judas got up from the
table and left.I’ve often
wondered why Jesus didn’t dismiss Judas at the beginning of the meal. Why did
he wait until after he had shared such an intimate time with his closest
friends? I imagine it might be like having your family gathered around your
deathbed and seeing your arch-enemy standing there in the midst of them. A
deeply personal last time to be with the ones you love the most would be
ruined. In the same way, Judas had defiled this holy moment. If Jesus knew what
was going on, it would have made more sense for him to ask Judas to leave
earlier, so he could have been excluded from this loving encounter with his
followers. But Jesus intentionally chose to include Judas. As the story
unfolds, we learn that Judas isn’t the only person present at the meal who will
betray Jesus. One by one, they will all fall away. When Jesus
is arrested, three times Peter denies even knowing him. After Jesus
is crucified, they all hide out for fear of being recognized as his followers.
Not only did Jesus share his last supper with the one who would betray
him, he shared his last supper with all who would betray him. And yet,
he loved every one of them enough to give them his very self, his body and
blood. This same
Jesus loves us enough to give us his body and blood, too. Just as he didn’t
turn any away at the table on the night when he was betrayed, he doesn’t turn
any away at his table ever. Even for the one who may be holding thirty pieces
of silver in one hand, Jesus still gives his body and blood to be taken in the
other.Lest any of
us think ourselves unworthy of receiving the body and blood of Christ, we need
to go back to the night when Jesus gave us this holy meal. From the very
beginning, it was shared with people who were unworthy of the gift. And that’s
what makes it a sacrament, because it is all about God’s grace poured out for
the undeserving.No matter
how strong or weak your faith may be, no matter how much or how little you read
your Bible or pray, no matter how well you’ve done at following Jesus or how
miserably you’ve failed, no matter who you are or what you’ve done – Jesus
offers you his body and blood. And the more unworthy you may feel about
receiving it, the more it has been given for you because it is given for the
forgiveness of sins.The
forgiveness of sins isn’t for perfect people. It’s for people like Judas, who
betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver. It’s for people like Peter who
promised he would never leave Jesus and then turned around and flatly denied
even knowing him. It’s for people like the disciples who cowered in fear as
soon as Jesus was taken from them.It’s a meal
given for the unworthy, and no one is excluded. It’s a meal where all are loved
and forgiven. It’s a meal where all are offered the gift of Jesus himself. And lest
there be any doubt about it, we’re reminded of this fact as we gather around
the table to receive Christ’s body and blood and we hear again the words that
recall for us how this meal came to us from the beginning. In the night in
which he was betrayed…

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About Me

Nancy is an ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She serves at Ascension Lutheran Church in Towson, Maryland. Nancy grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, and then served time at Bowling Green State University, before moving on to Trinity Seminary in Columbus. Starting out in North Dakota, she then returned to Ohio and served churches there before landing in North Carolina, where she served at two different congregations in Charlotte. She was also on the bishop's staff and earned a PhD from Pitt during her spare time in the area of religion and education. She considers herself an educator who happens to be a pastor and it makes a difference in how she does ministry. She is a divorce survivor, and the mother of two artsy-fartsy children who abandoned her when they became adults. Now she shares a home with Father Guido Sarducci, her tuxedo cat.